Consumers often want more information about a product prior to purchase than what is available on the product's packaging or in advertisements. There are of course multiple sources of such information, but most of these sources are not available at the point of purchase. It has been proposed to equip cellular telephones with a scanner capable of reading a barcode on a product, and retrieving information about the product through the cellular telephone. U.S. Pat. No. 6,993,573, for example, shows a camera-enabled cellular telephone that takes a picture of a barcode, transmits information from the barcode, receives content from the Internet for the barcode, and displays the content on a display screen.
The use of the same reference symbols in different drawings indicates similar or identical items.